Declan McCullagh is reporting that earlier this year the Department of Justice subpoenaed the left-of-center news aggregation site Indymedia.us for information including visitor lists and IPs, then issued a gag order forbidding them to talk about it unless authorized to do so. From CBSNews.com:
The subpoena (PDF) from U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison in Indianapolis demanded “all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us” on June 25, 2008. It instructed Clair to “include IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information,” including e-mail addresses,…
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by Elizabeth Jacobson
November 02, 2009 @ 1:03 pm
Wired reports that a Maryland woman recently lost her job due to an error in the FBI’s criminal database. Eschol Amelia “Amy” Studnitz, formerly a senior accountant for Corporate Mailing Service, was required to undergo a background check after CMS won a contract to handle mail for the Social Security Administration. She was fired from her job after the FBI’s criminal database deemed her “unsuitable” for level-1 security clearance. Studnitz was not given any details regarding her background check.
Two weeks later,…
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Today, President Obama signed into law a bill that will dramatically expand the federal hate crimes law, enabling prosecutors to bring federal charges against people who were previously found innocent of hate crimes in state court. The hate-crimes provisions were added to a defense appropriations bill, which the President signed in a White House signing ceremony this afternoon at around 2:30 p.m.
The new law dramatically expands the reach of the existing federal hate-crimes law that was already on the books, by…
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ACORN is now suing the whistleblowers who allegedly filmed it promoting illegal sexual activities for $2 million! And not just them, but also the conservative web site that made the video public! ACORN seeks an injunction to silence them — a classic example of an unconstitutional prior restraint.
That’s a flagrant violation of the First Amendment, but the lawsuit was filed in state court in Baltimore, where the judges are very liberal, so who knows if ACORN’s lawsuit will be dismissed. Even if it…
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ACORN, the group that helped launch Barack Obama’s career as a community organizer was recently caught in undercover stings advising about how to set up a brothel that would bring “minor girls into the country for purposes of prostitution,” reports the Washington Post. (ACORN receives taxpayer money despite a long history of financial fraud and vote fraud).
Now, Patricia Coats Jessamy, the Baltimore City State’s Attorney, is trying to silence those who have broadcast the video footage, relying on a Maryland law that violates the First Amendment.…
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The news that the Federal Government has forced UBS to give up the details of 4000 of its customers’ transactions has other financial institutions finding new ways to protect their clients. This has been greeted with dismay by one community. The following letter to the New York Times was intercepted and we provide it here in the interests of transparency.
Dear Sir,
As an international bank robber, may I say how much I deplore the underhanded way in which financial institutions are…
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by Wayne Crews
July 30, 2009 @ 11:40 am
Dan Rather actually made the following two contradictory statements in the same speech:
I personally encourage the president to establish a White House commission on public media.
and then:
A truly free and independent press is the red beating heart of democracy and freedom.
He’s right that the free press is a “watchdog on power.” But that’s not compatible with the idea that, as reported, “the government make an effort to ensure the survival of the free press.” A press funded, promoted,…
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An article in this morning’s wall street journal commends a coalition of business associations and councils that sent a letter to China’s Premier publicly criticizing the latest attempt to censor information Chinese citizens can access on the internet. The green dam-youth escort mandate would require all computers going into the nation to be equipped with an information blocking software.
It is rare public criticism of China’s policy, but it’s not brave, it will do nothing to change the policy, and reveals the…
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Bruce Schneier, eminent cryptographer, has declared market failure. He points to what he calls a meta-problem:
Those entrusted with our privacy often don’t have much incentive to respect it . . . What this all means is that protecting individual privacy remains an externality for many companies, and that basic market dynamics won’t work to solve the problem. Because the efficient market solution won’t work, we’re left with inefficient regulatory solutions.
Privacy is indeed an externality, but customer satisfaction is an externality,…
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Facebook has been at the center of a controversy involving its moderation policies and The Pirate Bay, a popular Bittorrent tracker that was found guilty of copyright infringement by a Swedish court last month. Since early April, Facebook has enforced a “site-wide” ban on links to The Pirate Bay - including those in private messages.
This practice may run afoul of federal wiretapping statutes that bar service providers from “intercepting” private messages, according to an article that appeared on Wired Threat Level last week.…
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Not many details have appeared, but the Atlantic reports on a speech given by the administration’s Melissa Hathaway in McLean, VA:
In her speech, Hathaway did not say much about the administration’s policy changes, although published reporters indicate that Obama plans to create a powerful national cybersecurity directorate that would work through the Department of Homeland Security, establish a national cybersecurity recovery plan and resolve longstanding conflicts between agencies.
I remain suspicious of collectivizing and centralizing risk in governmental bodies, and of…
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Already burdened by $8 trillion in new federal spending commitments and the likelihood of higher taxes to pay for bailouts, pork, and welfare, the economy now faces an additional threat: an explosion of litigation.
Even liberal Washington Post columnist Michael Kinsley can’t stand the Supreme Court’s liberal 6-to-3 ruling in Wyeth v. Levine, which let a patient sue an innocent drug maker for an injury caused by a physician’s assistant who disregarded repeated warnings by the drug maker. (The ruling indirectly “will cost lives“). As…
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by Wayne Crews
February 24, 2009 @ 1:41 pm
Even an economy in shambles shall not sway the elevation to Federal Trade Commission chairmanship of Jon Leibowitz, an interventionist-minded commissioner who, like all planners, knows better than others how markets should be structured.
In several important areas, his inclinations (judging from the cheers emanating from interest groups like PIRG and Center for Digital Democracy) lean toward substituting political “discipline” for what competitive markets offer.
He supports “opt-in” with respect to behavioral advertising, which we’ve often described as not-necessarily good for a…
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The prevention of regulation and the Rule of Law pounding its mighty fist within a medium or sector of business is generally something that is lauded around these parts. On occasion, though, an industry will find that it is possibly pushing the envelope ever so much over the line and chooses to act on its own behalf. This self-supervision, for the most part, tends to deter government involvement and the creation of legal regulation, which can in many cases be…
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by Wayne Crews
December 15, 2008 @ 5:22 pm
Earlier posts today dealt with the hoo-ha over Net Neutrality. By coincidence, an anonymous colleague put the following old 1996 quote by Sen. James Exon (D-Neb.) in my inbox over the weekend:
The information superhighway is a revolution that in years to come will transcend newspapers, radio, and television as an information source. Therefore, I think this is the time to put some restrictions on it.
Some things never change. Then it was content regulation, now neutrality, and returning soon,…
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Net neutrality has long been a threat to Internet users. Despite the rhetoric and appeals to “openness,” it was always an anti-consumer enterprise, irretrievably and irrevocably set against the concept of infrastructure wealth creation (as if content and infrastructure companies in free markets were somehow sworn enemies). It smacked of “infrastructure socialism.”
Now Google, neutrality’s chief proponent in Washington, FCC and policy circles, wants to secure for itself its own “fast track” on the Web, in conjunction with telecom and cable…
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Apple's 1984 "Big Brother" ad
An article over at Ad Age brings up an angle on the whole auto industry bailout probably not considered much before. The fact that a yet-to-be-appointed “car czar” will have control over a multibillion dollar advertising budget for the big three. Under the guise of “oversight,” this would effectively “Create World’s Most Powerful Marketing Exec[utive].”
The draft rescue plan for Detroit sent to the White House by Congress yesterday calls for the appointment of a “car czar”…
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With respect to the ongoing series of bailouts, my colleague Iain Murray pointed out that some sensible British commentators note that one of the ways to prevent entities from becoming “Too Big to Fail” is to engage in more vigorous antitrust activity.
I’m very, very skeptical of their idea, however. Speaking of entities Too Big To Fail, perhaps the gravest threat we face now is the federal government’s further collectivizing of risk, and unconstrained assumption of authority over virtually all…
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Since the President and President-elect start spending quality Oval Office time together today, and since the incoming admistration’s advisors can’t settle on either pushing a “Big Bang” agenda or something more incremental, we at CEI are more than happy to help. While they’re busy trying to lower expectations for a 100-Day agenda, we prefer to raise them–but in the direction of freedom rather than yet more central planning from Washington.
Given the vast scope of the Federal government now, any conceivable…
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